Ant and Four 0.5 - Runt Hunt
by Winter

"I saw his tail!" someone yelled, and pointed back the way they had all come. "He sneaked 'round!"

The whole posse turned, and the noise of their bare feet on rock receded. Ant sighed. Just a few more steps, and Rofus would have seen him. He leaned back against the rock he had been hiding behind. There had been nowhere else to go, and he had resigned himself to getting caught. Whoever the hunters had seen, and were chasing now, he sent them a thought of gratitude. There were no wild animals inside the dome, so it must have been another miner kid. Someone whose tail was now in danger of being yanked.

He put the toy down, and reached up to touch his temple. It stung, and the fur there felt sticky. His fingers came away with blood on them. Just a bit, though, not as bad as he had feared after he fell, face first, down a slope. This far from town, there was very little light, now that the suns had gone down, but Ant could clearly see the dark red against his light brown fur. He grimaced. Rofus would do worse than that, when they finally caught him.

Closing his eyes, Ant conjured up the image of his sometimes friend. Dark grey fur, a bushy tail that wagged whenever he laughed. Eyes as blue as Ant's own. A slightly narrow muzzle which nearly always grinned, or as now, frowned. Pretty soon, it would snarl. Because Ant had done the unthinkable.

He had stolen back his toy.

That was not the way it usually went. The younger pups made things they could play with, and their elders took them. But this had been different, because Rofus had helped Ant build the thing. This time, they had been on the same side. To begin with. Being a runt, Ant didn't have the strength to bend the metal rods he needed to make roll bars. That day, Rofus had been all grins, all friends. But when Ant was done, and demonstrated his... whatever it was, the grin had faded.

It had been a swift fight. Ant was the smallest, and Rofus was one of the strongest pups. He had been left with sore ribs, a bleeding nose, a black eye and no toy, while Rofus went away bragging about the thing he had built.

Opening his eyes, Ant stared down at his metal construction. The engine had come loose at some point, but that was like nothing. A strip of tape and it would be good as new. He sighed again. Not that he'd ever get it back to one of the workshops without being seen.

It wasn't much to fight about, really. Ant had welded three metal rods together to form a triangle, open at the pointy end. The front of his vehicle. There, he had fitted a crude wheel, then two more at the back ends. Those, he linked to a tiny electric motor with a battery, which he duct-taped between the sides. Then came the roll bars, one across and one set along the frame. Now, whichever way the thing flipped over, it would end up back on its wheels. And keep on driving.

All the stuff he needed, Ant found in the scrap yard. Pups weren't allowed in there, because some of the broken things could be dangerous. But because of his size, Ant had a knack for getting in where he was supposed to stay out. The workshops were open round the clock, so once he had his raw material, he could work whenever school was out. The foremen didn't mind; there were always machinery in need of repairs, and if a pup showed an affinity for technology, they were encouraged.

Where he now sat, near the dome's edge, hidden behind a too-small piece of rock, Ant's muzzle formed a silent snarl. No matter what his sometimes-but-no-more friend did to him when they finally caught him, he would fight back. Punch and kick and bite for as long as he could move. He wanted to turn the motor on and play for a little while, but that would bring the hunters sure as day brings night.

Back in town, the clock that counted hours struck midnight.

"Happy birthday," Ant told himself, while he spun one of the wheels with a finger. "I made you a present."

He had just turned two-and-a-half, although he thought he heard one of the foremen say he was seven. It wasn't always easy to hear what they said, from inside their full-body rad suits. Or maybe foremen counted time in a different way, how was a pup supposed to know? But the Thessalia asteroid belt, where Ant was going to spend his whole life, had gone round the suns two-and-a-half times since he was born. What other ways to count time were there?

Just then, raised voices were coming his way, and Ant forgot everything that had been going through his mind. He left his hideout and ran, hearing Rofus's growls from behind, as well as the excited yips of the other pups. Not wanting to get trapped against it, he left the dome and headed towards town, bare feet pounding the barren rock as fast as his legs could make them. Maybe in amongst the houses, there would be a place to lie low.

His once-friend was no longer on his side, but Ant hoped that luck was.